FIELD-DAYS IN CALIFORNIA 



the Grand Canon. If he were to tell the truth, 

 he would, perhaps, confess that the sight of it 

 afforded him — for the moment — almost as keen 

 a pleasure as that of the Canon itself. And he 

 might have said as much of a flock of eight or ten 

 pygmy nuthatches, engaging creatures, seen on 

 three occasions, with notes all of a finch-like qual- 

 ity (in that respect like those of the little brown- 

 headed nuthatches of the Southern States), and 

 one — a note of alarm, it seemed — almost or 

 quite indistinguishable from the sharp kip, kip 

 of the red crossbill. The hobbyist, — and why 

 should any of us feel like shirking the name, 

 since we are all hobbyists of one sort or another, 

 — the hobbyist, lucky man, has joys with which 

 no stranger intermeddleth. 



Every one to whom our particular hobbyist 

 ventured to speak upon the subject assured him 

 that there were no birds here at this season ; 

 and indeed, for long spells together, this seemed, 

 even to him, to be something like true. The Co- 

 conino forest is so almost boundless that the 

 winter denizens of it, mostly moving about in 

 little companies, are by no means " enough to go 

 round," as one of the hobbyist's outdoor cronies 

 is given to saying. So it was that our bird-gazer 

 often sauntered for an hour without being re- 

 warded by so much as a lisp ; yet he felt sure all 



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